Vijayawada, Aug. 4: A jealous young man who butchered a classmate in their college examination hall was today sentenced to be hanged, drawing cheers from women’s groups and students.

The mahila sessions court had to put off sentencing yesterday and twice again today because of commotion by people demanding capital punishment for 24-year-old Manohar Prasad.

Prasad, spurned by 22-year-old computer science student Srilakshmi, had attacked her with a kitchen knife on June 21 last year as she sat for her final-year exams at Vijayawada’s Sharada College.

He surrendered to police at Chennai nine days later after his relatives and friends refused to provide him shelter.

As Prasad was being brought to Vijayawada by the police, women activists and ordinary people lined up along the highway to pelt the motorcade with eggs and tomatoes.

The trial was delayed as no lawyer from the Vijayawada bar association would appear for the accused. Proceedings finally began after a Dalit lawyer agreed to defend him last April.

As the sentence was being read out to him, Prasad kept screaming his love for the girl he had killed in cold blood. “I still love Lakshmi and I did not kill her,” he shouted.

Prasad, a known rowdy and the son of a wealthy landlord, had been unable to accept rejection by the girl from a middle-class family.

Days before the murder, he had written in his diary that “if she keeps refusing me, I will kill her first and then kill myself at the same spot”.

But the sight of blood oozing from Srilakshmi’s body unnerved him, preventing him from carrying out the second part of his plan, he told the police.

Prasad was initially declared insane by doctors who examined him at Vijayawada jail. But the court rejected this, noting in its 23-page judgment that no instances of insanity had been found in his family.

“It was a well-planned murder and the police have established how he had procured the weapons and also hid them,” said judge Chalapathi Rao, who conducted the two-month trial amid hostile protests from women’s groups who wanted the accused hanged summarily.

The court urged educational institutions to bar students with criminal background.

“It would be better for the academic environment and also the reputation of the institutions if students with criminal backgrounds are denied admission,” the judge said.

The verdict was welcomed by students bodies.

“The punishment will deter others from carrying out such crimes in the future,” said Prabha, a student who had been an eyewitness to the murder.

Prabha had failed her exams, unable to write the remaining papers out of shock.

“I don’t mind missing one year,” she said, “but I am happy that the culprit has been punished”.